


O, me, oh mine.

by GraceEliz



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, Ignores a significant chunk of canon, Madness, Romance, Spoilers for Episode: s12e01-02 Spyfall, Unreliable Narrator, Usual expected levels of time heckery, he's really starting to lose it now folks, soft, this is not going to be pretty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-19 02:03:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22136767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceEliz/pseuds/GraceEliz
Summary: He waits for the humans to fall into his webs, waits for the creatures made of light to let slip why exactly they’re spying on this world, wait and waits and waits for her to catch on and give the thrill of challenge. And oh, isn’t this how they always were, waiting for each other? She’s a woman, and for the first time in – well, what must be a long, long time – he is taller than her. Gentle. Soft. Slim, that is the word? Sprung steel. And her eyes, God her eyes - he could stare into her and let himself be lost for a millennium in the galaxies he sees in her irises.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 107





	1. Before Spyfall

**Author's Note:**

> The basis of this is that 13 doesn't take on Graham, Ryan and Yaz straight away. She goes back for the three of them. I assume that, as much as she remembers, she keeps in touch... I really, really wanted some 13/Master, so, canon need not apply here. Just O and Doctor.

This current lifestyle, existence, is boring. He waits for the humans to fall into his webs, waits for the creatures made of light to let slip why exactly they’re spying on this world, wait and waits and waits for her to catch on and give the thrill of challenge. And oh, isn’t this how they always were, waiting for each other? She’s a woman, and for the first time in – well, what must be a long, long time – he is taller than her. Gentle. Soft. Slim, that is the word? Sprung steel. And her eyes, God her eyes - he could stare into her and let himself be lost for a millennium in the galaxies he sees in her irises.

This new him is feral, rabid, but still a little soft. He was – has been – will be – a woman, at the end? Or the beginning – the schism unfolds in his mind like a daisy under sunlight and he crushes it to dust before he can follow up on himself.

The greatest comfort from the endless drums is her heartbeat.

It is beneath him, as the Master, to admit he sought her out for loneliness. Alone too long and Time Lords go mad – Gallifreyans may be self-absorbed and selfish but they are still social creatures – and she, oh she tempers the madness in him to a higher plane of genius.

In his dreams, those cursed-blessed dreams, she kneels at his feet with the sunlight casting nebulae from her eyes and calls him Master. Maybe that’s all he’s ever wanted – a relationship with the Doctor again – power over the one person he’s ever even considered as equal. Yet. Sometimes she falls asleep in O’s space, on his sofa or curled in an armchair or even stretched out on a rug, her blonde bob a halo, and he remembers the tales of angels and demons – that light can triumph over dark – that like calls to like and that she may hate it but they are alike.

Their associates see it too: that O and Doctor hunt down those threatening the Earth as if they were born to work together, that the Doctor will always welcome O home after a spy-master mission, that O never refuses the Doctor refuge in the private spaces he guards from everyone and everything.

Over on his lumpy sofa, under old blankets bought from charity shops and market stalls, she shuffles and murmurs. The nightmares plague them both – she remembers hers. He doesn’t think he’s lived all his out yet. In some dreams he wakes her with a kiss, a rub of bare arm, a brushing away of her hair. In these dreams she smiles up in that so-soft way he remembers from youth. Had she spent some of it as a girl? He a boy – he remembers that somewhere inside him, tied tight to a sense of claim and belonging.

This woman, the Doctor, is his. Maybe Doctor-the-man is-was-will-be his, but now, here, he thinks in certainties. She belongs here and now to him.

O should not form such bonds.

She sobs awake, distressed, looking sick, so he reaches out for her cooing and soothing. Once she told him half-asleep she loved his voice. He did no work that night. What in him has altered so, that he wastes his time watching her sleep? She is older than him and yet how young she is in sleep – how young she is now, afraid of herself. There is no need for words in the mostly-dark: he hasn’t met her TARDIS yet, but they are in his and safe as a result – he is amazed, on the odd occasion he stops and thinks about this mess of relationship they’re calling friends, that she hasn’t yet noticed. He’s always been the better actor.

Small beside him, they tuck into his bed. He’d really splashed out on his bedroom. Plush curtains to section off this most private of refuges, lush rugs, rich fabrics on the double bed. So many possessions in this meagre apartment, for a spy.

With her under his arm in the dark, soft and vulnerable in a way he only recalls from their very-youth when he protected her from the harsh jeers of their classmates, he thinks he’d give her all his possessions – all the money in his accounts and everyone else’s. Ridiculous in the light of day. He is, after all, a monster.

But maybe, her nightmares whisper, so is she.

He always was the stronger telepath. Knowing she is falling for him – that she doesn’t know it herself – that maybe he was always fallen for the woman-Doctor far more than for the male-Doctor – oh it makes him buzz in his hearts.

It is a wonder, when she sleeps so, on his chest, cheek to his bare skin, that she doesn’t hear the four-beat war drum of his black crisped hearts. They beat only for her. In the innermost wall of his mind he knows they always have.

The darkness wraps around them like promises of freedom and space and visiting every star together.

They work so close together. He pushes himself into her space always, enjoying the glitter of her galaxy eyes so close to his, the puffs of her breath, the barest hints of the psychic link trying to form between them (he always forces it quiet, so as to avoid scaring her). Blushing isn’t new, exactly, but he loves it so much more than he ever did before – except maybe – no never – he adores making her blush and blink and duck into his side. Why does she do that? Inside himself, he hopes it’s because she likes him. The universe knows by now he loves – loves? Nonono. Likes. He likes her.

The assignment he has is a slow one, infiltration and gathering, well-suited to pretending he and his new wife are honeymooning here in Sicily. He can afford the trip. He is adoring spoiling the Doctor – they’re calling themselves Jodie and Sacha here, new names for a new mission. It’s unfamiliar to be in this situation. Was there a human woman he sort-of-loved in his past? There was – and madness – a version of the Doctor and an impossible man and a brave woman – or is this his future? He will never know, not truly.

Far and above the opportunity to spoil the Doctor – Jodie, a name he hopes they can keep – he’s enjoying being O and Sacha – is that there is no excuse to avoid touching her whenever he wants to. A form of glee rushes through him every time she laughs up at him, or tucks her arm around him in return, or allows him to drop a kiss on her hair, or even sometimes kisses him back – not on the lips, yet, but he has hope she will drop her walls for him. She is uncommonly soft for him.

Sicily is beautiful. When she recites a poem about soldiers eating the last captive mermaid, he thinks he can hear the music of the world she adores. After all, wasn’t the Doctor always listening to the things he himself couldn’t hear? The sea is the perfect backdrop to what he considers their first kiss.


	2. Soft - lie - Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She gasps out, oh how well he chose his name, at the kiss he drops on her cheek, mid-word, and if it was important she’ll just have to button it in for now because he hears Moonlight Serenade – Glenn Miller, famed through music circles throughout the galaxy, and how can he resist such a song when his perfect dance partner is right here?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not going to lie: this chapter is unbearably soft. Like. Dman. It took me a whole minute to pick a paragraph as the summary because it's so soft. And fluffy. Except the very end. Oop.

Staying in this little tavern-thing may have been the best idea for cover he’s ever had: people talk, talk, talk when they’re even a little the worse for drink, regardless of usual norms of whatever society they originate from. Social norms apply to neither he nor the Doctor – after all, was the first Doctor not just a boy who loved a woman and had a family (and of course drove the Master even madder) who had to argue his way into everywhere? Such an old grump, that one. The granddaughter had been a sweet little thing – Susan – what happened to her? Maybe he will ask one day when this is all over.

He is perched on a high barstool, every inch the new husband visiting from London, when she blazes in with the sunlight. An angel, true. The barman laughs; he catches the gentle pulse of joy the man feels, blinks when it becomes clear the man is buoyed by his, the Master’s, own reaction to her undeniable beauty.

Universes have burned and birthed with less splendour.

Yellow and orange and red flowers – like Gallifrey – are tucked into her hair, tiny braids to hold them in place, and oh how sweet they smell. Just this, he promises himself, just this once – stretch out the lie. Give them both this lie, a gift, and oh he will never smell flowers again without her soft hair and skin and smile burned into him. The drums silence under the explosions of her eyes and peace of her mind, under the chatter of young village girls and flowers and he’s missed most of her speech, lost in her.

Nothing has ever felt so close to being a home as this.  
She gasps out, oh how well he chose his name, at the kiss he drops on her cheek, mid-word, and if it was important she’ll just have to button it in for now because he hears Moonlight Serenade – Glenn Miller, famed through music circles throughout the galaxy, and how can he resist such a song when his perfect dance partner is right here?

“If you were anybody else I would never speak to you again,” she laughs, leaning on his chest as she does. Her eyes sparkle up into his own, hands warm, moving to his lead. 

“What?” he asks bewildered, smiling, despite the worry.

“It’s off the Glenn Miller story,” answers his Doctor, “You ever seen it?”

He has not; he thinks somewhen he has met Glenn Miller. The story of the film sounds enjoyably light. She was quoting, it seems, the scene when Glenn turns up at his girl Helen’s home after two years – and that is them, he supposes, two people who can’t stay mad at each other.

As they dance – the song has moved on, the little local jazz band don’t usually play this late, but they both know, by now, that the people around enjoy watching them – he wonders at the pearl necklace. A string of pearls around his Doctor’s neck. How beautiful she would be, in his arms in nothing but –

That is not a thought he can permit her to pick up on.  
With all the money in his accounts, however, he could buy the most beautiful strings of pearls in the world – for this assignment he bought her new outfits, plush velvet and the highest quality silks and any pair of cut-off trousers she wants. Of course she doesn’t know he paid for them, chose them, but she must by now suspect. Laying out her outfits for her, taking that next step, may however be a step of control too far for what little boundary still exists between them.

Jodie and Sacha are considered the softest new-married couple in town. People talk to them freely – after all, they’re just a pair of young rich English newlyweds who are more in love than any of the other visitors the island gets. He has nearly all the information he needs to hunt down his next informant – she does so hate violence, and where in the past he would have continued and she’d have huffed for a few days, he now finds himself hiding the violence. Oh he is no less brutal, he is no less cruel to those who are not on his side.

When he returns to the sunny island after a brief jaunt in scorching Tunisia she welcomes him, concerned, relieved. All bright eyes, pale skin, his – his. And if he breathes it into her, with the homecoming kiss, and she flushes – well, the locals smile and laugh. The Doctor and her Master. The Master and his Doctor. Coming home is not a sensation he is accustomed to.

He does go home. The Doctor is dancing through time with her friends, holidaying into chaos and running and mayhem from what had become their normal togetherness, and so the Master takes a trip home. Deep in the dark, the schism melting reforming melting in him, he remembered something. A secret. A lie. Lifting from the edge of his considerable psychic trace, woven deep into the torn rags of his soul. 

They lied.

Lied to them both a horrible lie and they have both been so so wrong, both lived out – oh, he hates. Hatred seethes in him like the cascades of the mountains. For this – for them – for what has been done – for all that pain they cursed him with – he will burn them.

It is an easy plan.

But. Yet. Still. Gallifrey has been lost to them before; this is not a decision he take can take lightly. Oh, of course he will end them for their deceit – has he not blown up systems for less? They are given a single chance. A chance to talk. Furious, he screams at them, forcing pain-anger-fear down the bond in his soul tying him four-beats to his home planet.

Explanations do not help. If anything this is worse – oh, the whole planet, lied to – everything they knew – all they fought for and over. 

Still – even aching – broken – he cannot watch. Marmalade. Ash. Lost. He leaves it behind. Even one memory of Arcadia, cataclysmic, is too many. 

Something is happening to Earth, of his own making, and of course she is coming home to him. How could she stay away? It all begins here, now, with the woman he pretended to be married to – doesn’t have to pretend to love – he can’t love – he is a monster –

He shoots off a text, image, a code of his place. The grief weighs heavy on him – drums, the drums gone, gone – he is mad, feral, rabid, gone from his counterweight too long, a knot of anger, and he has to try to be kind to people he simply cares nothing for, but that she of course as always loves. The Doctor’s strays. Their tutors –

All thoughts of home, bitter, acrid, ashed over, mercilessly crushed before fruition.

It will be fine, when she’s home here, in his TARDIS again. He’ll catch hers so they don’t leave it behind – they could run – ignore the plan – to hell with Earth – he’ll stretch out their softness until he breaks or she asks – and then. Then what.


End file.
